All Victims Accounted For After Asiana Airlines Flight 214 Crash At SFO: 182 Injured, Two Dead

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Last updated: 9:42 PM PT

All remaining passengers and crew members on board Asiana Airlines Flight 214 have been accounted for following a crash at San Francisco International Airport that killed two people this morning, officials said this evening.

Asiana Airlines flight 214 departed Incheon International Airport in Seoul, Korea at 4:35 PM local time bound for SFO, the Asiana Airlines said. The Boeing 777 crash-landed on runway 28L at about 11:30 AM. The flight carried a total of 307 people including 291 passengers and 16 crew members.

As of 8:25 PM San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said that a total of 182 injured passengers have been transported to area hospitals.

A total of 49 people were transported to hospitals directly from the scene, around 26 of them to San Francisco hospitals and the rest to San Mateo County hospitals, Carnes said.

An additional 133 were transported after triage. 123 people have been accounted for in the terminal of the airport, and were uninjured.

The two fatalities were found outside the plane on the runway when firefighters arrived on the scene.

Some passengers were found in the water when firefighters arrived on scene, but the plane was not in the water, Hayes-White said.

Given that the plane was on fire following the crash, Hayes-White speculated that passengers might have sought out the water to deal with flames or burns.

Passengers on the flight were a mix of Korean, Chinese, American and Japanese citizens, according to a statement issued by the airline this evening.

Of the 291 passengers on board, including 19 in business class and 272 in travel class, 77 were Korean citizens, the airline said.

Another 141 were Chinese citizens, 61 were U.S. citizens and one was a Japanese citizen.

“Asiana Airlines is currently investigating the specific cause of the incident as well as any injuries that may have been sustained to passengers as a result,” the statement said.

“Asiana Airlines will continue to cooperate fully with the investigation of all associated government agencies and to facilitate this cooperation has established an emergency response center at its headquarters,” the statement said.

San Francisco General Hospital is treating 54 people who were injured in the crash, a hospital spokeswoman said. The hospital has received four waves of patients today, but is not expecting any more patients from the crash, a hospital spokesperson said.

The hospital first received an initial “wave” of 10 patients, all of them in critical condition. Of those initial 10, two were children. Kagan said five of those people have since been upgraded to serious condition.

All 10 were Korean speaking, and the hospital has interpreters and Korean-speaking staff on hand to assist them, Kagan said.

At 5:45 PM, Kagan emphasized that the hospital does not need volunteer translators, and encourages those who want to help to donate blood at their local blood bank.

Later waves of patients included a wider mix of conditions, including some with minor injuries who were treated and released without hospitalization, Kagan said.

Kagan noted that the hospital had converted a pediatric urgent care center to help deal with the influx of patients. The hospital also set up tents outside and brought in additional staff today.

The hospital is working to discharge patients who can be discharged, and is setting up tents outside the emergency room to accommodate walk-in patients and others whose injuries might not involved trauma-level care, Kagan said. Additional staff have been called in to assist, she said.

Family members are being kept as close to the injured victims “as space allows,” Kagan said.

She said San Francisco General is not full and has the capacity to treat all of the people who are being taken there.

“We are putting into practice our disaster training and we are capable of taking care of these people today,” she said.

Earlier today, a spokeswoman for Saint Francis Memorial Hospital and St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco said that Saint Francis had received seven patients from the crash and St. Mary’s five. A call for updated numbers has not been returned yet this evening.

Stanford Medical Center received around 45 patients, including around three in critical condition and ten in serious condition, hospital officials said today.

The hospital had admitted 16 of those patients as of around 7:30 p.m. today, with others still undergoing evaluation, according to Dr. Eric Weiss, director of emergency medicine.

The vast majority of patients came by ambulance, although some were flown in by U.S. Coast Guard helicopter, said Dr. David Spain, director of the hospital’s trauma center.

Stanford is one of nine Bay Area hospitals to receive patients from the crash.

Weiss said that the hospital activated its emergency management plan immediately after being notified of the crash and within 30 minutes was able to mobilize more than 150 health care staff including doctors, nurses and other support staff.

In particular, the hospital activated seven trauma teams that included skilled surgeons, Weiss said.
Spain noted that while the hospital handled the influx of patients from the crash, patients from other incidents were still being admitted and helped as needed.

Firefighters were dispatched at 11:33 a.m. to SFO after the plane crash, a SFFD dispatcher said.

Waves of fire companies were sent by the fire department starting with 13 units after the crash was reported, the dispatcher said. When firefighters arrived on the scene the plane’s chutes had deployed and multiple people were coming down the chutes and walking to safety, SF Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said.

The wreckage of the plane lay flat off the runway with its tail and landing gear seared off and the roof over its midsection burned and gutted, exposing the passenger area between its wings.

The tail had separated from the plane during the crash, Hayes-White said.

Burlingame resident Kate Belding was out for a jog when she says she saw the crash and subsequent fire.

She was running along a Bay trail near the Crowne Plaza hotel in Burlingame, south of the airport, when something about the plane caught her eye as it was approaching the runway, which juts out into the water.

“It was too low or it was too slow, or something about it just looked different than it should have looked,” Belding said.

She said that when it touched down, she saw what looked like a small cloud of smoke.

“I thought that was a little bit weird, different from what you would usually see,” she said.

Then it became clear something was very wrong when she heard a loud bang and saw the plane skidding on the ground with its wings angled up in the air rather than parallel to the ground, Belding said.

She heard a second bang and saw a dark gray plume of smoke, she said.

A couple of minutes later, emergency vehicles began to arrive on the runway, she said.

She thought, “I can’t believe I’m witnessing this,” and ran over to talk with some people walking their dogs who were in similar disbelief.

“I run over there a lot, so you see planes coming in and out all the time, it’s just part of our daily life here,” said Belding, who is 56.

SFO officials said many flights have been suspended or diverted to other airports, but as of 3:45 PM, SFO says that two of their four runways have reopened. Passengers are still advised to check with their airlines for the latest updates.

A total of 242 flights originating at SFO and 186 scheduled to land at SFO were cancelled today. Other flights scheduled to take off for SFO were grounded in their departure cities after SFO temporarily closed its runways, Oakland Airport spokesperson Brian Kidd said.

As of 8:37 PM, SFO spokesman Doug Yakel announced that they would not reopen its two remaining runways until a team of National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrives on the scene.

The NTSB is the lead federal investigative agency into the crash and the Federal Aviation Administration is conducting its own investigation, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said.

In part, the NTSB team will help determine whether the crash caused damage to the runway that will need to be repaired before service can be restored, Yakel said.

NTSB chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman and other NTSB officials are traveling from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco to investigate today’s crash, the NTSB reported.

Hersman and a “go-team” from the NTSB were set to get on a flight at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after holding a news conference at about 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time, according to NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway.

The NTSB team is expected around midnight, and will hold a joint press briefing with airport officials Sunday morning at a time that has not yet been determined, Yakel said.

Yakel noted this evening that there has been some recent construction on runway 28, the runway involved in the crash, that lengthened the runway’s thresholds.

It is unclear whether that construction has any bearing on today’s crash.

The accident scene was secured and turned over the Federal Bureau of Investigations at 2 p.m. today. The FBI will be working with the NTSB on the investigation.

“At this point in time there is no indication of terrorism,” FBI Special Agent Dave Johnson said. “The FBI will be working closely with the NTSB to determine the cause of this incident.”

The runway closures have caused a huge number of flight cancellations and diversions to other airports including San Jose International Airport and Oakland International Airport.

San Jose airport spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes said 27 flights were diverted there, and that the airport was able to absorb them without disrupting other air traffic.

She said at about 3:45 p.m. that some of the flights were still on the tarmac awaiting word on whether they would be able to continue to San Francisco or whether to let passengers off in San Jose.

Barnes said the airport and airlines are assisting passengers in getting to their final destinations.
“We’ll all work together, everybody will find a way home,” she said.

Mineta San Jose is able to accommodate all aircraft with the exception of the Airbus A380, she said.

The crash also prompted SFO air traffic controllers to divert 11 flights to Oakland International Airport and other flights to airports in Sacramento and Los Angeles, according to Kidd.

Four of the airlines rerouted to Oakland were international flights, Kidd said.

Redwood City resident Thomas Shoebotham’s Lufthansa flight to SFO from Frankfurt, Germany, which was scheduled to land at 12:20 p.m., was initially diverted to Oakland and held there until it was able to continue on to San Francisco.

As of 5:30 p.m., his plane had arrived at its gate, but the passengers were being told they couldn’t yet disembark because customs wasn’t yet ready to process them. They had been on the plane for more than 15 hours, including the 10-hour flight time, he said.

“We’re still on the plane,” he said in a brief interview on his cellphone.

Shoebotham, music director for the Palo Alto Philharmonic Orchestra, was coming back from a summer trip to Europe with the El Camino Youth Symphony.

He said passengers are able to stand up and stretch and have been patient for the most part.

“Nobody’s threatened to kill anyone yet,” he said.

However, he noted a while later that the use of foul language had increased dramatically and that one passenger had gotten into an argument with a flight attendant.

There was no word on when they would be let off the aircraft, and restless members of the youth symphony-who Shoebotham said were extremely well behaved—were considering playing their instruments to pass the time.

Longtime San Francisco resident Barbara Malinowski was flying to SFO from South Carolina via Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and had her American Airlines flight diverted to San Jose.

She said things went much more smoothly than she expected.

“I’m so impressed. Kudos to San Jose International for the way they handled this,” Malinowski said. “I really thought we’d be on the runway waiting for a gate … I thought we’d be there for hours.”

The passengers were quickly let off the plane and by the time she collected her luggage, there were buses ready to take them to SFO.

California Governor Jerry Brown extended his sympathies to the passengers and families affected by the crash.

“We are grateful for the courage and swift response of the first responders whose actions surely prevented an even greater tragedy,” Brown said in a statement this evening.

House minority leader and San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi issued a brief statement on Twitter.

“Prayers are with those affected by Asiana flight crash and their families,” the statement read. “Thanks to brave first responders for their swift response efforts.”

And U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer also sent her “deepest sympathies” to those affected by the crash and commended first responders and medical personnel.

“I have spoken to the secretary of transportation and the National Transportation Safety Board chairman, and I am confident that this investigation will be complete and thorough to help prevent accidents like this from happening again,” Boxer said in a statement this evening.

Mayor Ed Lee noted that the crash “could have been much worse.”

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said he had offered the city’s sympathy and support to the consulates of China and Korea, as a large number of passengers came from those countries.

“We are deeply saddened by this incident, and our hearts are with the friends and families of all those who are affected who are here in our city,” Lee said in a statement.

“Having visited the site with staff and with police and the fire department, it is incredible and we are very lucky that we have so many survivors,” Lee said. “But we still have many in critical condition and our thoughts and prayers are with them.”

Bay City News has contributed to this report

the author

Eve Batey is the editor and publisher of the San Francisco Appeal. She used to be the San Francisco Chronicle's Deputy Managing Editor for Online, and started at the Chronicle as their blogging and interactive editor. Before that, she was a co-founding writer and the lead editor of SFist. She's been in the city since 1997, presently living in the Outer Sunset with her husband, cat, and dog. You can reach Eve at eve@sfappeal.com.

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